


Cloudy Eyes, Shaky Smile

by Mystic_Ender



Series: Smile for Me [2]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: M/M, apparently I can't go a couple of days without writing angst, but still angst, guess it could be worse, oh well, short angst maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:34:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25576651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystic_Ender/pseuds/Mystic_Ender
Summary: For the second time in his life, Michael never felt so useless. For the second time in his life, he stood there and watched as his father's creations closed their jaws and ruined what good thing he had going on.
Relationships: Michael Afton/Jeremy Fitzgerald
Series: Smile for Me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855816
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Cloudy Eyes, Shaky Smile

**Author's Note:**

> SHORT ANGST  
> SHORT ANGST  
> SHORT ANGST

For the second time in his life, Michael had never felt so useless. Unlike the first time, however, he hadn’t caused the accident. He had done what he could to never feel useless in his life again, too. He had gone to school and studied so that he could help heal, he had gone and made sure to learn so that he could make up for the biggest mistake of his entire lifetime.

He had been working when they brought Jeremy into the hospital. He had been in his blue scrubs, walking urgently with the doctor towards the emergency room. A wound to the head was all he knew. He hadn’t even been told who it was just yet, he hadn’t even been told what kind of wound he would need to be assisting the doctor with until they would decide if he needed surgery or not.

When he saw it was his _husband_ laying on the bed, he froze right in his tracks and watched him bleed with shaking hands. So many thoughts were colliding together in his head all at once, he felt like it might just implode. He wanted to cry, he wanted to scream. The only thing his body did was freeze with his mouth open like a fish. He felt like he was drowning.

Quickly he had been guided out, and quickly another nurse took over for him. It had been a daze as he was guided away by Fritz, that he had slowly befriended during the last year. He didn’t even notice the tears that slowly started sliding down his face, he didn’t even notice his shaking hands being taken and squeezed reassuringly.

Oh, how quickly things had changed.

He remembers the night before, hugging Jeremy tightly as the slightly shorter man clutched his pajama shirt. He remembers the tears of both fear and relief the man shed as he survived another night in the hellish place he refused to leave if only to collect the money and save it for the higher education he wanted to have. He remembers kissing Jeremy good night, he remembers promising him he would drive him to work the next morning for his dayshift. He remembers the hope he had felt that maybe finally Jeremy would be safe, even if he worked in the restaurant his father owned.

He should have known that the love of his life wouldn’t be safe from the jaws that were his father’s creations.

Michael didn’t know how long he sat there, waiting for news on his husband’s condition. He remembers being told he was brought in to surgery, his frontal lobe having been bitten right through. They didn’t know if he would survive it, but they would do their best to save what they could. He stayed in the same position for hours on end, not even getting up to eat or drink. His tears dried out, but his heart still called out. No matter that he felt dizzy, no matter that Fritz begged him to at least drink a soda or eat a bag of chips from the vending machine. He didn’t move.

He even prayed to a God he didn’t believe in, prayed that maybe, just maybe something would hear and give him what he hoped for with all of his heart.

And finally, after hours of waiting on end, still in his nurse uniform, the doctor he had been supposed to help stepped over to him and smiling. Michael knew that smile. The one thing he gave to worried lovers and families as he tried to keep them calm. It was a bringer of bad news. He wondered if he would see it in nightmares from now on.

“How are you holding up, Michael?” The doctor asked softly as he sat next to him. The older man had put the clipboard on the chair on his left so that Michael couldn’t read it. The smile was still there and Michael was getting more and more tempted to punch it up.

“How do you think,” He said weakly, voice hoarse from the crying and lack of water in his system. His eyes felt puffy and he could feel the dried tears on his cheeks. He made no move to rub them off, though. “How is he?”

“Stable. Though, Michael…” The doctor sighed and crossed his arms in front of him, not even bothering to look at the cracking man beside him. “It’s a miracle he’s even still alive. His front lobe was bitten off, and there will be consequences. Expect a change in personality and a lot of reconstructive surgery in the future.”

“Anything else?” He breathed out, his hands gripping the blue scrubs of his pants. His long hair was like a curtain in front of his face, shielding him from seeing the world in front of him. Shielding him as he allows another tear to roll down. “May I see him?”

“He’s most likely lost sight in both his eyes.” The smile faded at that last part and the doctor just sighed as he got back up. “Follow me. I’ll bring you to him, though keep in mind he’s still out and most likely will be for a while.”

The halls had never seemed so long in his life. As he walked along with the doctor down these halls, they felt as if they constantly stretched along to stop him from going to see the one man he had sworn to protect with his life. His steps sounded as if they echoed loudly around him, announcing where he was at all times so that the shadows could stare down at him with their disappointed, dead eyes.

And by the time he reached the door, it was as if the doctor next to him wasn’t even the same man anymore. As Michael stood in front of the door of the room his husband resided in, he suddenly felt years younger. The clothing on his back wasn’t the one he had in the waiting room, it was the gray tank top and dark ripped jeans he had worn back in 1983. His hand twisted the door open, and inside, and the only light filtering inside was the silver rays of the moon.

The figure in the bed wasn’t Jeremy, no, the figure was much smaller. Granted, he knew his little brother had always been small but when he had entered the hospital room he remembers thinking his little brother looked so much smaller than usual, buried in those pure white sheets. He had felt so much guilt at that moment, and he wanted to scream from it, he had wanted to rip it out and show it to the one hurt from his action. He had wanted to show how guilty he felt but he had never been able to.

“Are you okay, Michael?” The voice almost sounded like his father at that moment, and he could’ve believed it, but his father had never asked if he was okay after he stuck his brother in that bear’s mouth. And that was what snapped him out of it, the room around him changing if only slightly. The figure in the bed wasn’t his little brother anymore, but it was the blond he had shared so much of his life with.

“Thank you,” Michael whispered before entering the room, dragging the chair as close as he could to the bed. His hand shook as he took his husband’s right hand, not daring to squeeze it at all in case it would bruise. Bags were hooked to him, ranging from the usual clear liquid to the blood bag. Figures he had lost so much of it. He couldn’t even see his closed eyes, them being wrapped into the white bandages. His gaze remained on his face as much as possible before it moved to his chest, breathing again when he saw it lift slowly. The beeping of the machines sounded so loud they were almost deafening to his ears.

\---

The rest of the week had been spent in that room, holding his husband’s hand. He barely slept, his hair hadn’t been washed in days, and a beard started prickling his cheeks. He barely noticed though from the worry of having to wonder if one day Jeremy would simply give up and stay asleep forever, leaving Michael to live in a world where the one person who had been at his side for so long was buried six feet under.

“I walked Kirby, today,” He announced, sitting in the same chair he did all week. He kept trying to stay sane by talking to him as if he was awake and well as if he would simply wake up and smile at him with his warm smile before kissing him good morning. “She tried to eat a corner of the couch again, by the way. I tried to stop her, but a good chunk of it was already gone when I noticed.”

Fritz watched from the doorway, holding a clipboard. They didn’t dare enter and disrupt the moment between these two. They bit their lip before leaving them be, trying not to cry from the sight of Michael. This man she was used to seeing as collected even with the worst of sights, cracking dangerously. This was a side of Michael they had never seen before and it was heartbreaking.

When Michael was about to continue, telling him about whatever went through his mind, he felt Jeremy’s hand grip his a little bit more tightly.

“Mike?” It was weak, oh so weak, but the voice brought tears to the brown-haired man’s eyes. He cried silently and his hand tightened, holding onto his husband’s hand as if it was his current lifeline. “Mike, why can’t I see?”

“You’re awake,” He breathed out, his voice cracking a bit as relief flooded through him. He was so afraid, so afraid that there would be a repeat of 1983. Even if it wasn’t his fault, it certainly felt like it. He had driven him to work that morning, he had willingly kissed him and watched as he entered the glass doors of the building. “You’re awake.”

It didn’t matter that doctors and nurses flooded in after to take his vitals, see how everything felt. It didn’t matter that his husband’s usual chocolate brown eyes were cloudy and showed proof that they would never see again.

Jeremy, the love of his life, the one who helped him get up in the morning when he was a teen and grieving, was alive. That was enough for him.


End file.
